


Transference

by BiteMeTechie (The_Injustice_Trinity)



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Ableism, Angst, Drama, Drug Use, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Hallucinations, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, Light Sadism, Manipulation, Mental Health Issues, Pre-New 52, Teacher-Student Relationship, Twisted Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 17,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1692785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Injustice_Trinity/pseuds/BiteMeTechie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long before she wears greasepaint and he puts on sackcloth, the lives of Harleen Quinzel and Jonathan Crane overlap at Gotham University. There, they play the roles of student and teacher...among other things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _This story was written for the Free For All Fic For All--or FFAFFA for short--over on the Ask the Squishykins tumblr, wherein Twinings and I offer ourselves up to fill as many fic prompts as humanly possible with stories ranging in length from 100 to 16,000 words._
> 
> _Prompts: The first time Jonathan Crane made fear toxin; Harley Quinn dosed with fear toxin._
> 
> _A/N: Nothing ever goes the way I plan. Sometimes I feel less like a writer and more like a dictaphone: the characters do what they want and I just transcribe what happens. This was written over the course of four days while I was taking a break from another prompt and it basically would not end no matter what I did to it. I'll be updating regularly, as it's technically finished, but I may tweak this and that along the way._
> 
> _Be forewarned that the tone of this piece is a little up and down. This is intentional due to the mercurial and opposite natures of the characters involved, so…yeah. It also plays with continuity a bit, so though it was originally intended to fit neatly with Mad Love, it’s most definitely alternate universe. It still fits with the bulk of Harley’s history, but it veers off and does its own thing. Even I’m not quite sure how I feel about the directions it takes and the implications for the character, but it demanded to go where it went, so I let it._
> 
> _Trigger Warnings:I’m not sure how to warn for this. Fear toxin is an emotional and physical violation with traumatic after effects, which could potentially be very triggering. There are some very warped ideas about interpersonal relationships that develop herein as well. Additionally, though there is no non-consensual sex, there is a scene that may still be triggering for those with non-con triggers. A warning for very brief ableism should be tacked on, too._
> 
> _Please, please, PLEASE proceed with caution._

There were few places on Gotham University’s campus less popular than the Psychology classroom, due in no small part to the very unpleasant professor who taught there. The closest contender for the undesirable title of Most Hated Location was the lecture room…but even so, it was universally loathed only when it had the aforementioned psychology professor _in it_. It was not an unusual occurrence to see some student dragging their feet toward the psychology department, downtrodden and surly about the misfortune of having a conference with him, or even just going to class. It also wasn’t uncommon for passersby to extend their condolences to the unlucky soul who had to go see him for whatever reason.

Nobody liked Professor Crane, including those who didn’t have classes with him. Some feared him or sucked up to him, a few even respected him, but nobody liked him. Everyone wanted to spend as little time around him as possible: the bare minimum necessary to secure the college credits that would help them complete their degrees. He was _so_ despised, in fact, that after his first year of teaching, the Dean exiled him to the only building on campus that housed a single classroom, evidently to keep him far enough away from the rest of the staff that he couldn’t infect them with his ill temper. His colleagues couldn’t stand to be around him for anything more than the monthly University staff meeting, and some even called in sick to _those._

All this was well known.

So when Harleen Quinzel, a plucky, bright eyed psychology student, confidently made her way across the quad on a Monday afternoon with what might have been called a spring in her step, eyebrows rose and whispered gossip started circulating almost immediately. From the moment she passed the old oak dubbed the Writing Tree, where superstitious students went to finish their term papers, to when she sashayed across the lawn in front of the legal library, jaws dropped and an adult game of telephone began with speculative rumors being passed from person to person.

_”You don’t think—“_

_“—to see Crane?”_

_“—never seen anybody looking so happy to go to the psych department—”_

_“—must be drunk or somethin’, man. Gotta be—”_

_“—whatever she’s on, I want some—_

_“Do you think—”_

Though not used to being gossiped about on so large a scale, Harley had been the subject of enough talk over the course of her academic career that she gave no indication that knew about being gaped at and muttered about. Being an attractive young woman who was known to have something of a wild streak—the sort of wild streak that gave a girl a good-to-some-bad-to-others reputation—and being a fairly popular member of the University’s gymnastics team, it was pretty much expected for _someone_ to be saying something behind her back at any given time.

Harley acknowledged nothing going on around her as she walked, just continued on her way towards Professor Crane’s classroom. She hummed a little tune she’d picked up from somewhere and seemed, despite every observer’s shock, to be in a perfectly pleasant mood. Her footfalls were self assured to every outside observer, and inside, she was relatively calm, considering what lay ahead of her. Of course, in this case, “relatively calm” was generally considered to be anything less than screaming and rending her clothes in terror and anguish.

“Hey, Harley!” From the corner of her eye, Harley saw one of her teammates approaching, running to catch up to her. She didn’t stop walking, though she did slow down a little.

“Hiya, Sarah.”

“So, uh, hey…” Sarah said awkwardly, falling into step next to Harley. “Going to see Crane, huh?”

“Yup.”

“You in trouble?”

“Nope.”

“Well, that’s comforting.” Sarah released a sign of relief. “He cost us our best powerhouse last year.”

At this, Harley actually bothered to look up at her companion for the first time since she’d jogged over. “Yeah?”

“Oh, _yeah_. It was brutal. She had a nervous breakdown. Failed her right out of her scholarship.” Sarah scratched her neck absently. “So…uh…just wanted to make sure you’re…you know…okay and everything.”

“Don’t worry,” Harley said, tapping her temple with her finger, “No screws loose here!”

“Good.” Sarah bobbed her head a few times in what may have qualified as an uncertain nod. “So…you going to see him about, like, an internship or something?”

“Nah.” Harley waved her hand. “Extra credit.”

“Oh. Rough.” Sarah patted Harley’s shoulder. “I’ll pray for you. Break out the rosary and everything.”

“Thanks.”

“See you Saturday for the Phi Beta thing?”

“Absitively!”

“Excellent. Bye, Harley!” Sarah broke off and returned to the group of friends she’d left when she popped up to say hi, and Harley heard her start chattering at them. Though she couldn’t hear what was being said, if she had to guess, it was likely that Sarah was reassuring everybody that she wasn’t off her nut or about to get failed so hard she’d be forced out of college life forever more.

As Harley got closer to the psychology department, the other students started to thin out and the whispers finally began to subside. It was pretty far away from the most central area of the University, down a small stack of stairs that continued the path where the ground became sloped at the edge of campus. The building itself stood next to a small faculty parking lot that nobody really used and there wasn’t much in the way of places to hang out nearby, so eventually, almost all trace of her peers disappeared. The only mark that anyone left all the way out here was along the small concrete wall beside the stairs: spray painted graffiti of a bunch of penguins sliding down the handrail.

Harley took the steps two at a time, kissed her fingertips and touched them to the last penguin for luck, in accordance with school tradition, and continued down the walkway to the psych building.

It was around this time when, despite her best efforts to the contrary, her carefully maintained veneer of tranquility slowly fractured and the butterflies started to flap around in her stomach in earnest.

The gravity of the situation finally started to hit her. Extra credit work for Professor Crane, and of an unknown nature to boot. This could be either very good or very, very bad, she knew, if the talk of what he put extra credit students through was to be believed. There’d been rumors of all manner of cruel and unusual punishments at the hands of the psychology professor, from tests involving shock paddles and being left in the dark for hours to other, more bizarre forms of psychological torture.

One student Crane considered to be in need of discipline told horror stories about his experience, wherein he organized Crane’s extensive library of psychology books, both current and horrendously outdated, according to author, only to be told immediately after he finished that Crane wanted them re-sorted by subject. When that was done, he demanded they be sorted according to year and when _that_ task was completed, he changed his mind again and forced the poor guy to organize them by their place in the Dewey decimal system. This went on for several days until Crane was satisfied with his performance, right around the time when he was threatening to break down in tears, and he sent him on his way. The tactic worked—the student in question did become more disciplined—but he had to take two weeks off school to recover from the mental exhaustion of the professor’s seemingly nonsensical demands.

Harley tried to quiet her rapidly fraying nerves by rationalizing that it probably wouldn’t be all _that_ bad, whatever fate had in store. Crane seemed to like her—at least, he liked her as much as he liked anyone. Granted, his affection for other living beings seemed to top out at the “not likely to slaughter them indiscriminately” level, but, she reasoned, it could have been worse. Somehow.

By the time she entered the psychology building, Harley was nervously tapping her fingers against the sides of her thighs as she walked, causing her short skirt to flutter. When she reached Professor Crane’s classroom door, she steadied herself, took a deep breath and swept into the room, doing everything in her power to keep from shaking.

“Hiya, Professor Crane,” she chirped with more cheer than she actually felt.

Crane stood hunched over a stack of notes on his desk. He didn’t bother to look up at her. “I believe it is customary to knock before entering a room, Miss Quinzel.”

“Oh,” she said sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“Additionally, you are late,” he continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “I will not accept such tardiness in the future.”

“But my watch says—“

“Your watch is wrong.” He flipped a page and continued reading from the stack.

“I…” Harley looked up at the clock above the blackboard and saw that her watch was indeed a full ten minutes slow. “I guess it must be.”

For a long moment, the only sound in the classroom was the ticking of the clock. It was torturous, which she suspected he knew. Upon flipping another page, Crane finally looked up at her for the first time since she entered the room. His face remained a stony mask without emotion, but his eyes focused immediately on the top of her head and widened almost imperceptibly.

“You have changed your hair.”

Though she had to admit the difference was drastic, Harley was honestly shocked he noticed or bothered to say anything about it. She didn’t think he was the type to take note of such things, no matter how obvious. It…pleased her, in a strange way.

“Yeah,” Harley said, absently twirling a coil of the straw blonde hair around her finger. “Do you like it?”

“No.”

Like a balloon poked with a pin, her ego deflated.

“I assume that you committed this chemical butchery within the past twenty-four hours,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “If so, you will be unable to assist me today.”

Harley’s mouth dropped open in shock. “What? Why?”

“I am working on a formula for an experimental psychotropic drug,” he said. When she smirked against her will, he raised a finger and continued, “—nothing recreational, I assure you.”

“I believe you,” she said with a nod, though she didn’t entirely. He wouldn’t be the first professor on campus to make a little extra scratch selling wacky pills, though he might have been the first to design his own. “I didn’t know you were a chemist.”

“I am a man of varied talents,” he said dully. From anyone else, the phrase might have carried with it an innuendo. From him, it carried no such thing. “Be that as it may, any chemical substance in the environment—such as the residue from a hair bleach—could react…poorly, should it get into the formula.”

“I can wear gloves,” she offered hopefully.

He stared at her a moment.

The clock ticked.

Harley shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other.

“Miss Quinzel, even if you _hadn’t_ stripped your hair of its pigment you would have been required to wear gloves. This is a scientific endeavor in the field of chemistry. I had no intention of letting you touch potentially dangerous chemicals with bare hands,” he said, and looked her square in the eye. “I am not an idiot, you see.”

“You know, I realize that was kinda dumb,” she said hotly, “but I think I would have preferred it if you’d just called me stupid.”

“Which is precisely why I did not.” He went back to perusing his notes, waving her off dismissively. “You may go.”

“But…” Harley’s shoulders slumped. Was he really going to just…cancel the whole thing because she’d decided to go blonde on a whim? “My grades…”

“Come back Friday evening.” He picked up a pen and scribbled something on one of his papers. “Between now and then, wash your hair twice a day.”

“ _Friday_?”

He sighed in a long suffering way. “Let me guess. You have a date.”

“Well…” Harley plucked at the corner of her shirt sleeve and looked at her shoes.

He turned his attention back to her fully, his eyes hooded. “If you would prefer to be pawed by one of our positively _dismal_ halfbacks in the back of a Trans Am rather than improve your grades, by all means, do so. Be aware, however, that I do not take on extra credit students often, and my offer to do so for you will expire at eight o’clock sharp on Friday—and I do mean eight o’clock _sharp_.”

Harley frowned. “I don’t—“

“The choice is yours.”


	2. Chapter 2

Friday night rolled around and Harley showed up in Crane's classroom just like she was supposed to. She even made sure to show up thirty minutes early and knocked on the door loudly before entering.

Shockingly, the place was empty.

"Professor Crane?" Harley bit her lip and ventured a few steps into the room on tiptoe, looking around. "Professor Cra-ane?"

No answer.

Harley sighed and dropped her messenger bag onto one of the nearby chairs. It was her own fault for showing up early, she knew, but she'd figured that Crane would appreciate someone being well ahead of on time. She had imagined him sitting behind his desk, waiting for their appointment, tapping his fingers and counting the moments until she would officially be late, just to have the excuse to give her a thorough tongue lashing.

Thinking on it, though, it actually made sense that she'd been wrong. Given how exacting he was, Crane was probably the sort who thought that being early was a sign of being unable to be precisely on time just as much as being late was. He also seemed like the kind of man who didn't waste precious minutes waiting for people when he could be otherwise engaged in more useful pursuits.

Twiddling her thumbs, Harley looked up at the clock. She stared at it long enough to watch the little red second hand make one whole cycle around the clock face and blew out a breath. Well…she had twenty-eight minutes to kill. What was she going to do?

In theory, there was just enough time to get to the campus coffee shop and back, but factoring in how long it usually took to actually pry coffee from the mildly misanthropic baristas, it was better not to risk it. There was a soda machine near Crane's office down the hall, but on the off chance he was inside it (though she hadn't seen any indication that he was when she passed the door on her way in) she didn't want him to find her loitering outside.

Harley wrinkled her nose. She could always pass the time by poking around Crane's desk, but if she wasn't failing out of school now, she certainly would be if he caught her.

Still…she pressed her index fingers together as she thought, released them and then mashed them together again…she was going to be doing some kind of actual work for him, which was undoubtedly laid out on his desk. Presumably she'd be seeing his notes anyway, right? There was no harm in sneaking a peek…and if he had something blackmail worthy out in plain view, like certain other teachers she knew of, that certainly put her in a better position to change her grades for the better, right?

Craning her neck, Harley took a few steps closer to the desk. She wanted to get _just_ close enough to see what was there, but also wanted to stay far enough away that she could jump back and claim innocence if she were caught.

Crane's desk was exceptionally well organized, unsurprisingly. Not a single paper was out of place. Even the bundle of ink pens that stood upright in a coffee mug on the corner of the desk seemed to be sorted by color—red, blue and black. Red pens greatly outnumbered the others, she noted ruefully, which certainly fit with everything she knew about Crane's teaching methods. Many times Harley found every page of her essays peppered with dozens of blood red notations in the margins, with comments ranging from corrections of fact and grammar to veiled insults.

Harley continued to scan the surface of the desk, keeping an eye out for anything remotely interesting or useful. The only items of particular note were a few file folders placed front and center, each of them closed. Though they had no labels on their tabs to give away their contents, she could see a little yellow paper peeping out from inside them.

After a moment's consideration of the risk versus the possible reward, Harley picked up her messenger bag and drew closer, close enough to touch the folders. She looked around herself to make sure she was still alone and with a "Whoopsie!" swept them right off the desk with a carefully aimed swing of her bag. They fluttered to the ground in front of her, sheets of paper flying every which way.

"Clumsy me!" she said a little too loudly, punctuating her fraud with a practiced, yet still nervous, giggle. Harley dropped to her knees and scrambled—as slowly as one _could_ scramble—to pick up the papers.

In contrast to the neatness of his workspace, Crane's handwriting was a cramped, spiky scrawl. There was so much of it she couldn't even begin to make sense of it, not without sitting down for an hour to read over every single line three or four times. The notes did not shirk on lengthy scientific sounding words and several equations were scribbled here and there, both in the middle of the pages and along the margins. Some words jumped out at her—epinephrine, cortisol, Bupropion, dopamine—but she was in enough of a hurry to straighten up the papers that her eyes didn't linger on them for long.

Her mind raced with possibilities. Dopamine was one of the… _love_ hormones. So was epinephrine. Bupropion, if she was remembering correctly, was a stimulant with a number of positive sexual side effects. Could Crane have been working on…an aphrodisiac of some sort? From what little she gathered while glancing over the pages, that was the only thing she could think of.

The classroom door slammed suddenly and Harley yelped in surprise—"EEP!"—sending the notes flying again. This time she really _did_ scramble to pick them up, doing her level best not to look up when Crane's shoes came into view.

Crane cleared his throat loudly and, though no words were spoken, it was clear that his tone was just this side of furious.

"Professor! I…uh…there…was…a breeze?" Harley looked up at him. The sudden movement put her slightly off balance, but not nearly as much as his appearance did.

She'd never seen Crane without his tweed jacket before—he never removed it, not even when the air conditioning stopped working on the hottest of school days—and seeing him without it was something of a shock. He still wore the matching vest and tie, but the pristine white dress shirt he wore was rolled up to his elbows, making him look almost… _casual_. Most startling of all, the lack of jacket highlighted just how slender he was, something she'd never noticed before with the bulk of tweed fabric. There was nothing to him!

Harley stared at him, her perceptions positively rocked. He was still very much not a handsome man, but being a bit unbuttoned went a long way toward making him look like the sort of professor students might try to sleep with, either for good grades or perhaps even just for fun. He looked…well, not distinguished exactly, but not stiff, either. It was…odd.

She found she rather liked it. If this extra credit thing didn't work out, she mused, maybe she could find _another_ way to raise her grades...

Crane folded his arms over his chest. "If you are _quite_ through….?"

She giggled nervously, scooped the papers up into her arms and stood, telling herself she had not just developed a small crush on her professor, no way, no how.

Without warning, he snatched the notes out of her hands, crushing them between his fingers. His knuckles were white.

Harley gulped.

"If I had another student lined up to assist me," he said dangerously, voice sliding down into an octave that dripped with threat, "I assure you that your snooping would earn you a _failing grade_ in my class for this and _every other semester._ "

She shrank under the fierceness of his glare. "I'm sor—"

"You're sorry that you got caught," he snapped. " _That_ I believe. Keep your empty platitudes to yourself, Miss Quinzel. I have no need for them."

He stepped away from her and moved toward his desk, straightening the papers with practiced precision. "I presume that you have _some_ idea what we will be working on…"

"I can't read your handwriting," she said.

"I have no need for dishonesty, either." He didn't look at her as he laid the file folders down and continued sorting the papers. "What do you believe we will be working on based on your _covert observations_?"

Harley twisted her fingers together in front of her. Though she was not generally a shy young woman, she found it impossible to say the word __aphrodisiac__ _,_ not only out of embarrassment but partly out of wanting to keep him in the dark about just how much she knew _._ "A stimulant?"

"How astute." Crane snapped up a pen and wrote something down on the paper in front of him. "Perhaps you are not a complete waste of space after all."

"Gee, thanks, Professor Crane," she chirped. From him, that bordered on being a legitimate compliment.

"I am still in the experimental stages of developing the formula," he said, setting the pen aside. "You will be assisting me for two reasons. One, I need a second pair of hands for the more…delicate portions of the blending processes, as well as someone to take notes while my hands are otherwise occupied."

"And two?"

"I need a guinea pig."

Harley's eyes went wide. He wanted to test the stuff on her? _Her_? "Professor Crane, shouldn't you maybe…use a guinea pig for that?"

"Each of the compounds we will be mixing have already been deemed safe for humans and none are contraindicated," he replied. "The risk will be minimal."

"Oh." Harley brightened up, relieved. That didn't sound so bad. "Okie dokie."

Crane stepped away from his desk. "Come. I have set up a small laboratory in my office."

"In your office?" Harley grew suspicious. First he demanded she ditch her date, then he showed up without a jacket, now he wanted to work on—and experiment with—an aphrodisiac _in his office_? Was he trying to seduce her? Not that she was opposed to the idea or anything, especially not now with him standing there without his jacket, but he could at least be upfront about it…

"Did I stutter?"

"Nope!" Harley picked up her messenger bag, slung it over her shoulder and followed him out of the classroom. Whether he was trying to seduce her or not was ultimately immaterial; she was going to earn her extra credit one way or another.

Crane's office was a very short walk from his classroom past two other vacant offices, a soda machine and a janitor's closet. Taped to the door was a piece of paper with his name printed on it, which was strange considering most other professors had theirs etched directly onto the frosted glass. It suggested that this office was intended to be a temporary arrangement, but as far as Harley knew, Crane had been relegated to this building for more than a year. Unless the Dean was perpetually on the brink of firing him, it didn't make sense to give him such shabby accommodations.

Crane unlocked the door and it swung inward, revealing a room that didn't seem much bigger than Harley's closet. By her estimation, it was _maybe_ eight feet by eight feet, and that may have been a little generous. There was an unforgiving-looking swivel chair on one side, a desk and a loveseat that appeared to have been slept on recently. The desk was cleared of all office supplies and a makeshift chemistry lab had been set up where they must have once resided. There was an Erlenmeyer flask, a centrifuge and a lab burner, some beakers and test tubes as well as a number of containers that were filled with various liquids, powders and plants. There was even a mortar and pestle, which somehow seemed both quaint and barbaric at the same time.

Harley entered the office and looked around curiously. Crane bumped into her when he closed the door behind himself but failed to apologize.

"Gee, Professor Crane," Harley said, looking around the cramped room, "your office is really…it's a real…"

"'Dump' is the expression you're groping for, I believe," he said, locking the door. He then moved to the desk.

"I didn't want to say so, but yeah…a dump." Harley perched on the arm of the loveseat, extending one leg to keep her toes on the floor and bending the other, clasping her hands just below her knee.

"You will certainly get no argument from me about _that_. But, these are the facilities Dean Yeager has so _graciously_ provided me with…I'm afraid we must make do."

Both Harley's eyebrows lifted as he loosened his tie and removed it. "Soo…what's first, teach?"

"First," he said, crouching behind the desk to retrieve something, "you will need more appropriate attire."

"Ooh, spoiling me with a new wardrobe already, huh, Professor?"

He stood up straight, a piece of white folded fabric in his arms. "It's a lab coat, not a mink, Miss Quinzel."

"Oh well," she said, taking it from him. "A girl can dream."

Crane retrieved a lab coat of his own and slipped into it, as Harley did the same. He then provided her with a pair of latex gloves in a small enough size that they hugged her hands like a second skin.

"Now. Shall we begin?"


	3. Chapter 3

Hours passed. They worked long into the night, dropping one chemical into another, measuring powder, crushing herbs and flowers, blending and heating and spinning test tubes in the centrifuge according to the formulations recorded in Crane's notes. Harley found, much to her surprise, that she had something of an aptitude for chemistry—or at least, an aptitude for following orders—and wondered why it hadn't been this easy in high school. Probably because her high school chemistry teacher wasn't nearly as skilled as Crane was, nor did he deliver instructions with such clarity.

In between pulverizing plants with the mortar and pestle, Harley removed the test tubes from the centrifuge as each batch finished its brief spinning session. She labeled every tube with the formula number and handed them off to Crane, who checked them for color and cloudiness and recorded his initial impressions of their appearance as well as anything else he felt important to note about them. For the most part, Harley somehow managed to contain her curiosity enough to not stare over his shoulder as he took notes. Still, he occasionally caught her looking at his messy scribbling and sent withering glares her direction accordingly. She deflected the worst of his wrath by looking appropriately chastised every time.

At first, it was awkward for both of them to work within the small office. Harley felt like she was nothing but elbows and knees for awhile, constantly bumping into her professor with this body part and that body part, brushing her fingers with his and knocking her shoulder into him as they reached for different things, but in a very short time they found a rhythm and cooperated like a well oiled machine. Truth be told, she rather…enjoyed it. He wasn't all that unpleasant to be around, once she got used to the sour face he pulled whenever she made the slightest mistake, and the furious scolding that followed.

Upon reflection, she actually didn't mind that part very much. She discovered the harsher he was with her, the more likely she was to retain the lesson he was trying to impart, as though her brain cataloged the information as being of greater importance when it was snapped at her or when he dropped his voice in warning.

An additional bonus of his strict nature was that when she did well, his praise—no matter how little of it there was—was made that much more satisfying. This was a man with standards that were nearly impossible to meet. The fact that she managed to come even close to being _acceptable_ as an assistant was a lofty compliment indeed. The boost to her ego was not unwelcome. It went a long way toward making her like working with him.

How funny, she thought with a secretive little smile. She liked working with him. Who'd have thought that she, the resident party girl and bad idea in a short skirt, would enjoy working with a man who was almost certainly the most dour professor in all of Gotham? Idly, she wondered if it had something to do with her very mild new found attraction to the man. Surely she wasn't as shallow as that, was she?

"Is something amusing, Miss Quinzel?"

The smile that she thought covert dropped from her lips instantly and Harley turned her attention back to her work, her expression as severe as his. "Not a thing, Professor."

And so it went.

The night wore on until they'd been working so long it was well after midnight. When the clock struck one-thirty, Crane peeled off his gloves and took off his glasses to rub his tired eyes. Harley—who had removed her gloves long ago to finish with her note taking—continued scribbling formula numbers on labels as he did this, but stopped when Crane's fingers closed over hers to keep her pen from moving.

She looked up at him, eyes wide. "Professor?"

"I believe it would be pertinent for you to lie down, Miss Quinzel."

As far as propositions went, that was certainly the most…Professor-y that she'd ever heard.

"Why's that?" she asked, coyly looking up at him through her lashes.

"You have misspelled 'formula' three times in a row now," he said, nodding at the labels in front of her. "Each time more…creatively than the last."

Harley stared down at the labels she'd been writing on. _Fromula, Forula, Frormuila_. "Oops."

"Go to bed, Miss Quinzel."

She very nearly asked _Yours or mine?_ but retained just enough of a sense of self preservation not to do that. "So…when should I come back?"

"Based on my calculations, the batches we have made tonight should be matured enough for testing in three weeks time."

"Three weeks?" A pout formed on her face without her permission. She felt disappointed that she wouldn't be helping him for such a long time. Maybe the fumes were getting to her. "Isn't that awfully long?"

"Not particularly. Between now and then I have a number of less…involved tests to conduct before we begin human trials." He removed his lab coat and picked up his long abandoned tie. "I suppose we could always forgo them, but I'm sure you would prefer it if I made doubly certain that none of the ingredients we've used tonight are tainted or will result in a lethal allergic reaction."

"But I thought you said—"

"One can never be too careful."

Harley frowned at this. Hours before, he'd assured her that everything they were working with was human-safe; now there was a danger of the combined ingredients possibly being lethal? What was he playing at? And did she really want extra credit _that badly_?

He finished tying the Windsor knot at his throat and smoothed his tie. "I will see you in class on Monday, Miss Quinzel."

"Yes, Professor."


	4. Chapter 4

After a long weekend of partying, Monday came and Harley arrived almost exactly on time for psychology class for what may have been the first time in the history of her academic career. She smiled and waved at Crane when she entered his classroom, but he was too busy writing "HISTRIONIC PERSONALITY DISORDER" on the chalkboard to pay her any mind. One or two students noticed her waving at him and made curious faces at each other— _why is she so happy to see **him**?_ sorts of faces—but everyone had the good grace not to start gossiping where their professor could overhear.

Harley took a seat in the second to last row and pulled out her notebook and pen, eagerly preparing to take notes. Crane was wearing his tweed jacket again, she noticed, but this did little to stop her from superimposing the image of him in just his shirt and vest over it. The memory had stuck with her more than she thought it would, undoubtedly because it was so strange to see him out of "uniform." Seeing him out of his jacket was like seeing the sky turn green one day: so unusual that the memory took precedence over the ordinary.

Professor Crane turned around to face the class and Harley did her best to grin wide enough to catch his eye.

He didn't so much as glance at her. In fact, he didn't acknowledge she even _existed_ for the entire class, his eyes seemingly skipping over her with every sweep across the room that they made. Despite the project the two of them had shared—the rapport and camaraderie of a common goal that she thought they had developed—he didn't even know she was alive.

When class ended, Harley left with her brow furrowed and the corners of her mouth down-turned into the tiniest of frowns. She started toward the quad, deep enough in thought that it was troubling.

Though it was slight by anyone's standards, her change in demeanor was still pronounced enough that it prompted no fewer than six different guys to offer to cheer her up by any means possible, with proposed methods ranging from doing funny voices to doing _her_. Granted, she received at least a dozen of those kinds of offers on a good day anyway, but even the sleaziest frat boys noticed that she looked grumpy, and they didn't notice much of _anything_ going on above the neck.

Tuesday went much the same way Monday did. Wednesday and Thursday, too. With each passing day, her smiles and waves upon entering Crane's classroom grew a little more exaggerated; when he asked a question, she thrust her arm in the air a little more desperately. Every day she moved up a row until she was sitting front and center, beaming at him from her seat, hoping he'd give some indication that their project—no, that _she—_ was important enough to acknowledge in some way. _Any_ way.

Still he didn't notice her.

It didn't make sense. Why wasn't he paying any attention? And why did it bother her so much that he wasn't? Perhaps, she theorized to herself, because everyone paid attention to her wherever she went? She'd never actually gone wholly unnoticed before. Everything about the very notion was positively bizarre to her.

After four solid days of being ignored, Harley decided it was time to try a different tactic on Friday afternoon. She flounced into class with her hair in a ponytail, wearing her best and tightest Gotham University sweater over a button down shirt. She took a seat in the very back row, which was empty, daintily crossed her legs at the ankles and took out her notebook.

As the hour wore on, she fanned herself with her hand a little, feigning being overheated, and made a great show of pulling her sweater over her head, thrusting her torso forward as she did so. Harley dropped the sweater next to her desk and rested her chin in her hand, returning her attention to Crane's explanation of Bipolar Disorder.

After a few more minutes, she casually unbuttoned the top button of her shirt. A few minutes after that, the second followed. The third—which was the last she could undo without her appearance becoming downright obscene—was undone about ten minutes before class was scheduled to end.

When class was dismissed, Harley put all her books in her messenger bag and put her sweater over her arm. She did this slowly enough that she was one of the last students to leave the classroom and—when she finished gathering up her belongings—she headed for the door, taking the ponytail holder out of her hair as she went. She passed Crane's desk where he sat grading papers and, just as she stepped out into the corridor, she shook her hair loose in a tumble of white-gold waves.

Harley flipped her hair and said over her shoulder, "See you Monday, Professor Crane."

Much to her consternation, he did not look up or acknowledge her in any way.

The hair toss always worked! She'd done a subtle strip tease over the course of a full hour, just for him! What was wrong with her?

Harley practically stomped back to her dorm room.


	5. Chapter 5

The weekend passed with Harley spending the entire time seeking advice and solace in women's magazines and _Dear Cupid_ columns. By Sunday night, she felt ready to tackle anything Crane could throw at her. Ignore her, would he? Ha! She didn't even care! She was going to show up to class, be fabulous and then he'd be sorry!

(It did not occur to her that her sudden obsession with her professor was concerning.)

On Monday, she sauntered into class wearing a figure hugging turtleneck and jeans. Classic and a little girl-next-door. A surefire winner.

No reaction.

Tuesday, she wore a little black miniskirt with some white go-go boots and a leather jacket. A little rough and tumble, a little dangerous. That might appeal to someone so buttoned up…

Still nothing.

Wednesday, she went full on girlie girl with a pink lace dress and pearl stud earrings.

If anything, he seemed to ignore her _more_.

On Thursday, she got desperate enough to pull out all the stops in a little red wraparound dress that would have put even the best little black dresses to shame.

Crane didn't acknowledge her, but just about every other man and a fair few women on campus did.

On Friday she decided it was time for seriously drastic measures. One charcoal pencil skirt, a cream button down shirt with a little black vest and a pair of thick black glasses later, she had the look she wanted: sexy librarian.

For the first time in two weeks, Professor Crane actually looked at her. Oh, sure, it was only for a second, but he looked, and his eyes widened, and he very quickly went back to what he had been doing.

_Yes!_

He carefully avoided her gaze over the hour—not ignored, but _avoided_. After two weeks of being _ignored_ , this was a major victory. Harley barely managed to keep from skipping out of the room when class was over. She felt so good, in fact, she treated herself to a strawberry milkshake.

* * *

Over the next week, Harley's wardrobe underwent a transformation. Her usual casual clothes were replaced with variations on the "librarian" theme that she'd perfected the Friday before and she watched Crane carefully for any indications of developing more cracks in his armor. There weren't any that she could discern on Monday, but that didn't mean anything. She'd obviously had _some_ effect on him, that much she knew for a fact, and since she planned to replicate the conditions that caused his initial response for the foreseeable future, he was undoubtedly going to experience them again.

On Tuesday, he actually met her eyes for longer than a split second when she entered the room. She felt her heart skip a beat.

Wednesday, he handed her graded essay to her _personally_ and said, ever so cordially, "Miss Quinzel." She discovered then how much she liked the way her name sounded rolling off his tongue.

Thursday he actually _called on her_ when she put her hand up. She scarcely knew what to do with herself for the rest of the afternoon. He _cared_ about what she had to say!

By the time Friday rolled around, she was absentmindedly doodling little hearts in her notebook during class and trying out the names _Harley Crane_ — _Mrs. Professor Jonathan Crane—Mrs. Dr. Professor Jonnycakes Crane, Esq._ in the margins of her textbook.

(She didn't like them much, but she could learn to live with one or another.)

When class let out, Harley closed her notebook and put her other things away in her messenger bag. She had every intention of shuffling out of the room with the other students, but Crane held her back.

"About tonight, Miss Quinzel…"

She tried not to look too eager. "Yes?"

"Seven."

"Seven what?"

"O'clock, Miss Quinzel."

"Oh." Harley laughed a little too loudly, a little too falsely. "Sure. I'll be there."

He looked her over. "Are you feeling ill?"

"Oh, no, I'm just peachy!"

He didn't seem convinced. "Seven o'clock then."


	6. Chapter 6

Harley knocked on Professor Crane's office door at seven o'clock sharp. She had the luxury of being on time because she'd ditched the rest of her classes in the afternoon, deciding that it was far more important to go shopping and find some really killer heels. She needed something to go with a skirt that had a daringly high slit up the back, after all, and finding the right shoes could have easily taken six hours. Class could wait. Shoes could not.

After shopping, Harley went back to her dorm room, showered and changed into the most tailored white shirt she owned. She paired it with a pinstripe pencil skirt and silver brocade vest, finishing the ensemble with her new pumps and some candy apple red lipstick. She pulled her hair back in a bun, slipped on her glasses frames and now, here she was, a bottle of champagne concealed in her messenger bag and a million different scenarios playing in her head in which the furniture in Professor Crane's office played a scandalous starring role.

The office door opened and Professor Crane stood before her. Disappointingly, he was wearing his tweed jacket. Oh well. That just gave her an excuse to take it off of him later.

"You're on time," he said. His tone contained a measure of surprise but still managed to have an air of boredom to it. "Come in, Miss Quinzel."

Harley slipped past him, brushing her body against his as she went, and took a seat on the loveseat, arranging herself for maximum aesthetic impact.

"Call me Harley," she said huskily, looking up at him.

One of his eyebrows raised. "I would prefer not to."

At first, Harley was mildly disappointed at his rebuff, but it only lasted a split second. He wanted to call her _Miss Quinzel_. All the scenarios she'd been imagining began to take on a naughty-student-slash-punishing-professor twist. She was okay with that.

After closing the door behind himself and locking it just as he had the first time she'd assisted him, he crossed to his desk and opened one of the drawers. He produced four small containers with green labels, four syringes, a pen, notepad and a single sheet of crisp white paper.

"Before we begin," he said, "there are a number of things I would like to discuss with you."

"Oh, yes, Professor?"

"Primarily, I am concerned with making certain you know _exactly_ what you're getting yourself into."

Harley smiled a little to herself but nodded, indicating that she wanted him to continue. He had no way of knowing that she suspected what he was trying to do. Best to humor him.

"My experiment is intended to evoke certain emotional responses in the subject. I wish to isolate one specific emotion on the spectrum and enhance it through artificial means. I trust you follow me so far?"

"Yes, Professor," she breathed. "Would you mind if I let my hair down?"

"I…" He blinked at her for a second with confusion. "I beg your pardon?"

"I'm getting a teensy weensy headache," she said with a practiced pout, "and I think that may be why."

Crane sighed. "Very well. If I may continue…"

"Oh, _please_ do," she said, pulling the pins from her hair.

"Miss Quinzel, tonight you will be experiencing an intensity of emotion that I doubt you will have ever been subject to before and I want you to be as prepared for the onslaught as you possibly can be."

"Yes, _sir._ " She began undoing the bun at the nape of her neck, untwisting the hair with her fingers.

"I will also need you to describe your experiences in vivid detail, which requires that I give you a diluted form of the drug so that you may remain lucid. Even still, the results may be…overwhelming for you."

Harley hummed a little and let her hair fall loosely about her shoulders.

"There are four different forms of the drug that I wish to test. One is absorbed through the skin, two are inhalants—a powder and an aerosol—and the last is intended to be injected. We will go through each in turn over a period of several weeks. A short time after the initial exposure, I will give you the antidote and you may have time to recover before we begin with the next form of the drug."

Harley fanned herself a little bit and made a little _whew!_ sound. "My, but it's hot in here. Don't you think it's hot in here?" She slowly unbuttoned the top button of her shirt and tugged at her collar.

"I hadn't noticed." Crane did an admirable job of keeping his eyes from obviously dipping down to her now exposed collarbone, but she caught the little flicker of interest that he couldn't keep hidden.

"Maybe you should take your jacket off, Professor. You don't want to get overheated."

"I am quite all right," he said placidly, continuing his litany despite her effort to distract him. "Once you have been exposed to the drug, you may experience any number of side effects. Anxiety, rapid heartbeat, tingling in your extremities, sensory phenomena…"

"Mhmmmm…" Harley unbuttoned the second button and looked at him with rapt attention. A case of nerves, a pounding heart and some tingles sounded pretty standard for what she had in mind…

"Knowing all this, you are still willing to be my test subject, Miss Quinzel?"

She didn't answer. She was too busy thinking about tingles.

"Miss Quinzel."

"Hmm?" she asked dreamily.

"Do you agree to take part in the trial?"

"Absolutely!"

"Then—after you sign this release—we may begin."

Harley didn't even bother to read it, just scribbled her name, dotted the "i" in "Quinzel" with a heart and handed the paper back to him. He took it, slipped it inside one of his desk drawers and retrieved a pair of latex gloves and a surgical mask from within.

"The skin first, I think," he said, snapping his gloves on. He picked up one of the containers with a green label and spun the cap off, setting it on the desk. Crane then motioned for Harley to move over on the loveseat so that he could take a seat beside her. "Roll up your sleeve, please."

"Oh…" Harley bit her lip and glanced at him. "I…can't."

"You can't."

"Nope," she said it so sadly that it was almost an apology. "My sleeves don't roll up."

"Then I suppose I'll have to settle for—"

Harley's shirt was off before he could finish his sentence. He seemed to completely lose his train of thought before it even hit the floor. He didn't turn away in the gentlemanly fashion she almost expected him to, but he did stubbornly refuse to look anywhere near her cleavage. Though the full slip she wore did a decent job of keeping her from looking immodest, nothing could conceal the fact that she was wearing a push-up bra underneath it.

Crane cleared his throat. "As I was saying, placing a few drops on one of your legs would have been more than sufficient."

Suddenly, Harley's foot was in his lap. "Why didn't you say so?"

He stood up so abruptly that it was as though he'd just sat on a tack. It was something of a miracle he didn't douse himself with the experimental formula in his haste to get her leg off of him.

Almost immediately, Crane regained his composure and looked at her sternly. "As you went to all the trouble of removing your shirt, your arm will do, Miss Quinzel. Please extend it."

"'Kay." Harley held out her arm to him where he stood and waited.

Placing the container on his desk, he knelt down in front of her rather than returning to his place on the loveseat. He took her wrist in one hand and traced the veins running up her forearm with the fingertips of the other, examining the skin there. A shiver traveled down her spine in response.

He took a very deep breath, which was either a means of steadying his nerves or an impossible to hide indication of his excitement, and carefully dipped one gloved finger into the container. Drawing it out again, he slid the digit over the delicate flesh on the inside of her elbow and rubbed the solution into her skin with a series of small circular motions.

When this was done, Crane released her, to Harley's great disappointment. He replaced the cap on the container he held and put it back on the desk, then peeled off his gloves and picked up the notepad and pen.

"Though it may take some time for you to fully feel the effects, please describe any physical sensations that you are experiencing."

Harley closed her eyes and tried to focus on nothing but her body. She felt the suede of the couch under her fingertips, smooth and cool; the lace edge of her slip tickling her collarbone; most of all, she felt the patch of skin where Crane had touched her. It was not unlike the feeling after stepping out of a hot shower without a towel—damp skin rapidly drying in cold air.

"I feel…chilly." Harley giggled a little nervously.

Why was she nervous?

She heard the scratch of a pen on paper. He didn't say anything more.

Harley breathed deeply through her nose and gripped the loveseat cushion beneath her a little tighter. The sensation of cold was beginning to spread outwards from the area where the formula had been rubbed into her skin. It reached her fingertips and then crawled up her arm, over her shoulder and down towards her heart. The feeling settled there and grew colder still, like an icepack was resting on her chest.

"I'm…cold all over," she muttered, drawing another breath. Her lungs felt constricted, the way they might have if she had pneumonia. "My breathing is…" She tried to breathe in again and failed to get as much oxygen as she wanted. "I can't…get a full breath."

Again she heard the sound of pen moving over paper.

The cool sensation grew ever more oppressive, spreading further until she was freezing from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She shivered. Goosebumps popped up on her arms.

"Continue," he urged.

Harley gasped for air a few times and was slammed with the sudden feeling of being pressed in on from all sides. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be a car getting crushed at a junkyard. Her lungs barely took in any air at all. Her bones ached from the effort of trying to breathe. There was a pounding in her skull that was in time with the beats of her heart.

"Heavy…." Her fingernails dug into the cushion now, her knuckles white. "Can't…claustrophobic…"

The darkness became too much to handle. Harley's eyes snapped open and she clawed at the loveseat, desperate to get away from the pressure that was squeezing her lungs. The room spun in front of her eyes. "Dizzy."

All at once, heat exploded outwards from the inside of her elbow. Her skin started to tingle, then to burn. The sensation raced over her body, chasing away the cold that had been there before. It made her think of sitting too close to a radiator in winter—close enough for her skin to redden.

"Hot," she whispered, curling in on herself without realizing it, letting go of the loveseat and hugging her arms. "It's…hot…"

And then…panic.

It tore up through her, starting in the pit of her stomach and shooting upwards until she felt it inside her skull. It felt like the butterflies she got whenever she met someone she was attracted to, but sharper and multiplied times a thousand.

He hadn't exaggerated: this was just as intense as he'd warned it would be. It wasn't painful but it was certainly uncomfortable and more than a little alarming. Distantly, she wondered how much worse would it have been if the formula had been full strength.

"A…" She gulped air like a fish out of water and slipped from the couch into the floor where Crane still knelt. Her fingers somehow found themselves wrapped around his lapels and she collapsed against his body. The sudden weight forced him to sit on the floor with her practically in his lap.

Harley held on for dear life as she rode out the waves of sensation that rocked her body. The heat began to subside only to be replaced by tingles that made the hair at the back of her neck stand on end. Everything in the room seemed very far away now, like the world itself was drawing away from her.

"A what?" he asked, wrapping his hands around her waist to keep her from convulsing.

Though Harley didn't realize it, she was whimpering. She buried her face in his chest, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Afraid."

The word didn't quite sum up everything she felt, but it was all she could manage in her current condition. Though she clutched Crane's jacket desperately, she could not quite believe he was really there. She felt like the only living thing in the entire universe. Isolated.

No. That wasn't right. She felt… _abandoned._ By everything.

She tried to say _alone_ but she didn't have the capacity to do so. She sobbed into his shirt, making incoherent muffled little noises.

Harley barely heard the sound of Crane putting on his gloves. Barely felt the injection of the antidote.

She very, very slowly started coming back to herself. The tears stopped. Her breathing came easier. She could feel the carpet under her. Could smell Crane's aftershave. The world came back into focus and the darkness that had been encroaching on her drew back.

She breathed in. She breathed out. She did nothing but focus on keeping that pattern going for a long time.

Harley didn't know how long she lay there, curled up like an animal in its master's lap, but it must have been quite awhile. Eventually, she became aware of Crane's hands on her. One was pressed against the small of her back, keeping her steady, the other stroked her shoulder blade, almost absentmindedly. It was…nice.

"Miss Quinzel," he whispered.

She shook her head against his chest without realizing. The hand on her shoulder blade disappeared. With a small, distressed moan, she mourned its loss.

Gentle fingers slipped beneath her chin, tilting her face up. The lights in the office seemed much too bright for her eyes to handle. Harley suddenly realized that the glasses she'd been wearing were gone. Where they'd gone to and when she'd lost them, she had no idea.

"Miss Quinzel," he repeated, looking directly into her eyes.

Her lip quivered. "Harley."

Crane sighed but relented. "Very well. _Harley_. Have you recovered?"

"I'm…" She took a breath. "I'm okay."

"I am glad to hear it." His fingertips slipped away from her chin and he withdrew the hand on her back. He gently pulled her hands free of his lapels—she'd been holding them so tightly and for so long the fabric was mashed and bent out of shape—and placed them in her lap. "If you would be so kind as to get off me…?"

Shakily, Harley shifted and struggled to her knees. He stood up, wincing, and offered her his hand. She took it and rose to stand in front of him. She found herself a little unsteady on her feet, but thankfully only swayed for a moment. Whatever he was working on—rather, whatever _they'd_ been working on—it certainly wasn't what she'd thought it was. Or if it was, it was the worst aphrodisiac in history.

"If you would like," he said, "I will escort you back to your dormitory."

"That won't be necessary." She smiled wanly and scrubbed at her face to wipe away the tears that had dried on her cheeks. Harley sniffled a few times, but that was the end of that. "Professor…"

"Yes, Miss Quinzel?"

"Which…which emotion are you trying to isolate?"

His icy blue eyes met hers and held her gaze—something they had never done, she realized. She felt dizzy again. "Fear."

"I…" Harley gave a weak little laugh, "I thought it was going to be something else."

"I assumed you…when you read my notes…" Crane's face hardened. He seemed angry with himself. "Had I known you were entering into this so blindly, I never would have allowed it."

"S'okay."

"Are you willing to continue the experiment?"

"Yes."

"Then please come back next Friday evening."

"I will."


	7. Chapter 7

Harley didn't leave her dorm all weekend. She spent all day Saturday lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and clutching one of her pillows to her chest. Her roommate assumed she was hungover, and that wasn't an unfair comparison, though it was not entirely accurate. There was no pounding headache or sensitivity to sound, but every light that met her eyes was too bright to look at without squinting and she felt a little disconnected from reality. She even felt disconnected from her own body. She had to keep squeezing the pillow to make sure it was still there.

Strangely, her memory of what she'd gone through during the experiment was rapidly fading. It had been so intense when it was happening that it was disconcerting that the whole thing was just…slipping from her mind. What she remembered most came directly before Crane rubbed the drug into her skin and after she came down from its effects.

Most vivid of all were the memories of lying on the floor wrapped around her professor and the smell of his aftershave. Why those stuck with her above anything else, she didn't quite know, but she clung to them desperately even as everything else fell away.

On Sunday, Harley actually left her bed for more than five minutes and ventured as far as the dormitory candy machine to get a chocolate bar. She ate one square of it but felt too sick to finish the rest. She handed it off to another student, a girl obviously in the middle of a cram session who probably needed the boost in serotonin, and went back to her room.

As the day wore on, her memories of Friday night faded more, until all that remained was the ghost of Crane's hand on her chin when he forced her to look at him after the experiment was through.

Distressingly, her body seemed to remember better than her mind did. She felt generally tense for no discernible reason and had no appetite. It was almost like recovering from a very bad flu—she felt achy and weak, nauseous and dizzy—but her brain couldn't recall why she felt this way, stubbornly refusing to fill in the holes in her memory that admittedly were probably better off missing.

Harley skipped classes on Monday, deciding to spend the day wandering downtown Gotham, passing the time with window shopping. By the time night fell and she returned to campus, almost every trace of her long night in Crane's office was gone except a few bits and pieces. Whether the gaps in her memory were a side effect of the drug he'd exposed her to or her mind trying to protect itself from further trauma, she didn't know, but by Tuesday morning she was feeling almost as good as new.

As the week progressed, Harley found the minor lingering physical effects of the drug gradually disappearing one by one. She didn't even realize her breathing had been shallow for days until she managed to take a truly deep breath on Thursday night; she didn't notice that her vision had been slightly blurry until it returned full force and she found herself no longer needing to squint at her textbooks.

When Friday finally arrived, she made her way to Crane's office once more. She felt nervous, but a different sort of nervous than she had the week before. Her heart fluttered in her chest when she knocked on the door and her breath caught when he opened it.

His jacket was gone again, as was his tie. He was already wearing latex gloves.

"Come in."

She stepped into the office and immediately took her place on the loveseat. He locked the door behind her.

"Tonight we'll be trying an injection." He seemed to produce a syringe filled with yellow-green liquid from out of nowhere. "Given that the drug will be delivered directly into your bloodstream, this will almost certainly be more…severe than last week."

Suddenly there was a lump in her throat and she didn't know why. She forced it down.

He recognized her apprehension. "If you do not wish to continue…"

"No, I want to." She gave him a smile. "I'm no quitter."

He sat beside her and took her arm. Harley sucked air in through her teeth when the needle pierced her skin and felt faint as she watched the plunger force the drug into her vein.

The site of the injection immediately grew cold. Within ten seconds, she felt as though she had rivulets of cold water running down her entire body. Harley began to shake.

Though the memory of her last exposure to the drug was almost completely gone, what little was left came roaring back with a vengeance in startling flashes of sensation the moment the drug entered her bloodstream.

She instinctively braced herself for the onset of blistering heat that she knew would follow the ice in her veins, but it never came. Instead, she grew colder. Her teeth chattered.

"C-c-cold," she stuttered, collapsing back into the softness of the loveseat. She threw her head back and stared at the ceiling with eyes that barely saw anything in front of them. Her breaths became short and shallow.

This continued for several minutes, but unlike the week before, the uncomfortable sensations were kept at a low, constant hum instead of mounting to a climax of hysterical terror. Her nerves were raw but she didn't feel like screaming or crying, which was a vast improvement.

The only thing that grew worse was the scope of her vision. Blackness closed in around the edges until she could see nothing more than two pinpoints, like twin lights at the end of a tunnel in the distance. "D-d-dark."

A minute passed. Five. Ten. She felt like she was lying in a snowbank in the dark, but nothing more than that. She was still aware of her body enough that she could feel Crane's fingers pressed to the inside of her wrist to keep track of her thudding pulse.

"That's enough."

Harley jerked when she felt the metal tip of a syringe against her skin. Something heavy came down on her chest, pinning her in place to keep her still as the needle pricked her skin, and the relief was slow to come. As the effects began to subside, she was reminded of coming inside to thaw out after playing for a very long time in the snow. She tingled everywhere, like fingers that were near frostbitten being held under warm water, and took slow, wavering breaths as she came down.

Her eyes watered as her vision returned, leaving her slowly blinking away tears and staring at the ceiling.

"How do you feel?"

Taking a few breaths, she gathered strength enough to speak. "Like…I'll never be warm again."

"You are quite clammy." She felt his hand on her forehead, then at her throat. Then she felt something being draped over her, warm and scratchy and smelling of something familiar.

Though she felt fully awake, it wasn't until later when she realized that she'd been hovering near the precipice of unconsciousness for hours. When she actually came to, sunlight was filtering through the blinds over the office window and she was covered with Crane's tweed jacket.

He was still sitting next to her, watching her intently though there were dark circles under his eyes. "It's nearly six."

Harley rubbed her head, which was pounding. "It is?"

"Do you remember anything?"

"I remember…" She strained but the thump-thump-thump inside her skull stopped her from getting anywhere. "No."

" _Damn._ "

"Did…oh." Harley shut her eyes to try and control a sudden wave of nausea. "Did you keep watch over me all night?"

"Not in the least. I timed my return to precisely coincide with your regaining consciousness."

A weak smile that took almost all her energy played on her lips. "You did keep watch."

"I couldn't very well leave you alone all night in my office," he said shortly. "There's no telling what manner of trouble you might have gotten yourself into while I wasn't looking."

"Don't worry, Professor Crane," Harley said, opening her eyes again, "I'd never sneak a peek at your diary."


	8. Chapter 8

Harley's weekend recovery went much faster and a good bit easier this time than it had the last. Part of that undoubtedly had to do with the fact that she had no memories to speak of at all—and thus didn't have to worry about them disappearing—and part of it had to do with the fact that the aftereffects were no worse than a very mild hangover. She spent Saturday in bed, drinking lots of water and taking ibuprofen and by Sunday her appetite returned full force, meaning she spent the day eating cheez-doodles and milkshakes.

When she arrived for psych class on Monday, she realized that something had changed in the dynamic she shared with her professor. While just two weeks earlier she'd been trying on his last name the way other women tried on shoes, she didn't spend class doodling in the margins of her notebook like a high school girl, neither was she caught up in imagining him without his tweed coat or fantasizing about making him notice her.

Instead, she stared at him intently, studying him. When he turned to the blackboard to scrawl on it, she noticed for the very first time the way his long, tapered fingers held tight to the chalk. She watched his movements, taking note of how fluid they were, how practiced. She listened to him lecture—really listened—and heard how he spoke to his students. Everyone thought him to be irrationally short tempered, but he wasn't. Everyone thought him a pompous windbag, but he wasn't _that_ , either.

He wasn't lecturing just to hear himself speak. He wasn't sarcastic and abusive because he enjoyed it. Everything he did had one end goal: to give his students the critical thinking skills to solve problems themselves. To make them _better_ students. They just resisted him every step of the way _so much_ that he had no choice but to resort to involving them by making them upset. He could have easily droned on for an hour and put half the class to sleep, but through insults to their intelligence and harried fist shaking, he kept their attention enough to force them to listen.

Crane, she realized, was a very passionate man. So passionate that he wanted nothing more than to infect others with his own thirst for knowledge. He _cared_. He cared _so much_ that he was probably ranting and raving himself into an early grave for the sake of teaching a few dozen students how to think for themselves.

He was, despite everyone else's assertions to the contrary, an excellent, brilliant teacher.

The shallow crush that Harley had developed over the past month began to deepen into true admiration. Had anyone else known about their extracurricular activities, they would have recognized this as being rather warped, but for good or ill, the woman in question didn't have that much in the way of self awareness.

Friday night, she went to his office again. She tried not to look too happy to see him, but he gave her a suspicious enough look that she figured she must have failed.

"Which one tonight, teach?"

"The powder."

Hours later, she sat curled up on the loveseat, shakily drinking a cup of tea that Crane had provided her with. The bottom of the cup clattered noisily against the saucer in her hand as he wrote down everything she was still experiencing. The emotional response to the powdered version of the drug had been minimal in comparison to the first night, but the physical symptoms were quite pronounced. A constant tremor was one of the more troublesome things that plagued her. That and the fact that her heart beat so fast it she wondered if it might have been replaced by a hummingbird.

Harley's recovery was very, very slow. Her memories didn't fade. She couldn't eat for two days afterward. Nightmares tore her out of sleep three times a night over the weekend. The only thing that comforted her at all was the memory of Crane's arms holding her immobile as she shook on the loveseat during the experiment, keeping her from shuddering right off of it and into the floor.

This time, when she skipped classes on Monday, it was because she had no choice. She skipped the whole week, in fact, forging a doctor's note that said she was having a very bad bout with the flu. Though she knew she desperately needed the rest, she hated missing class.

(Well, she hated missing _his_ class…)

She still made it to Crane's office on Friday, as scheduled, but she looked so pale and drawn that he turned her away, telling her to take another week to rest up. Harley, deprived of her weekly ritual of spending time with him, found herself spiraling into depression after he sent her home. This compounded the misery of her week without seeing him.

It wasn't until Saturday morning when she started to feel anywhere close to human again and she began attending classes once more the following Monday.

The week seemed to crawl by, perhaps because she so looked forward to being in his company privately again. It didn't even matter to her that she would almost certainly go through emotional and physical hell the next time she saw him as their experiments continued, so long as she saw him. She even tried to find excuses to stay after class, just to be near him, but she never managed to pull it off.

She realized soberly on Friday morning that, once the night was through, every day at Gotham University would be like the last two weeks had been. Unless plans changed at the very last moment for some unforeseeable reason, this would be their final private session together. Crane would probably go right back to ignoring her the way he did during the long month after they'd first created the formula and she would go right back to trying to get his attention any way she could. At least, until summer break, when they'd be separated for three months without so much as a chance to see each other in passing.

Harley couldn't let that happen. She had to do _something_ to let him know how she felt about him…she had to make him understand how much their time together meant to her.

But…how? Every subtle hint she'd thrown his way had gone right over his head. Even the not-so-subtle hints had done that. The only thing she hadn't yet tried was physically throwing herself at him…


	9. Chapter 9

When the door to Crane's office opened that night and he welcomed her inside, Harley miraculously managed to keep herself from throwing her arms around him and kissing the living daylights out of him. She decided that it would be best to wait until _after_ the final test was through. He seemed more touchy-feely afterward and was always more willing to soothe her with his hands and whispered words when she was coming down from the drug.

Harley sat down and nervously worried her lip between her teeth. He already had a mask laid out on his desk and an aerosol can with one of the green labels she'd come to know so well plastered across its surface.

"Are you ready?"

Slowly, she nodded.

Crane carefully placed the mask on his face and picked up the aerosol. "Relax, Miss Quinzel."

Harley closed her eyes for a moment to better focus on her breathing.

In. She held her breath and counted to five.

Out.

In. One, two, three, four…

Out.

In. She opened her eyes and watched Crane watching her.

Out.

In…

_PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHT_

The last thing she saw was a cloud of milky green. The last thing she heard was the scream that was ripped from her throat.

Then, she was falling. Down, down, _down_ into an inky pit of darkness that blotted out everything around her. Her bones ached down to the marrow. Her skin crawled.

Worst of all, she was alone.

Harley stayed suspended there in that black hole for what felt like eternity. She felt so much and so deeply for so long that soon she could barely process the sensations that washed over her. The universe itself folded in on her, gravity pressing in on all sides. Unseen _things_ gnawed on her fingers and toes, sending pin pricks of pain racing along her nerve endings.

Something struck her chest. It felt duller than everything else.

It struck again, an iron hammer against her sternum, forcing the air from her lungs. They burned, crying out for oxygen, until the cry was answered. Her chest heaved and she convulsed as warm air forced its way down her throat.

She gasped abruptly, her eyes flying wide. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her mascara leaving thick black trails over her flushed skin.

An instant later, a hand was clapped over her mouth, muffling her screams. Her arms were pinned to her sides by something strong wrapped around her waist. Harley struggled against it, desperately trying to get away, but it was no use. The drug left her weak and spent, with only enough energy to wail and thrash like a wounded creature with its leg caught in a trap.

"It's Professor Crane, Miss Quinzel," a voice murmured in her ear. Breath tickled the hairs on the back of her neck, giving her something to focus on. Still her shrieking did not stop.

She gradually became aware of the fact that she was sideways. One of her cheeks was pressed against carpet, the rough material burning her, rubbing her skin raw. Her mouth covered, she fought to breathe through sinuses plugged from crying so long that she was lightheaded from it.

Her heart rending screams became sobs, and eventually pathetic whimpers and then long, drawn out moans of an anguish that she couldn't give a name to. Her struggling grew weaker, though she still shook violently, and eventually, it stopped altogether.

Harley lay there on her side, feeling limp and empty. It was difficult to muster up enough energy to do something so small as blink. She took a thousand shuddering breaths before real consciousness of her surroundings and her body started to return.

Her shoes were gone, undoubtedly lost in the struggle, and her shirt was torn at the shoulder where she must have ripped out the stitches while thrashing around. Crane's arm held hers immobile, his body flush against her back, and the fingers of his other hand dug into her cheek, bruising her and keeping her quiet. She felt the gentle rise and fall of his chest against her spine and used it to guide her own breathing.

They stayed there like that for a very long time. It may have been an hour, it may have been six. Harley had no sense of time.

Eventually, she stopped shivering. When she felt coherent enough to speak, she shook her head from side to side.

"Do you promise not to scream?" Crane whispered, lips brushing her ear ever so lightly.

Harley nodded as much as she could with his fingers gripping her so tightly.

Satisfied, he withdrew his hand, though he did not stop holding her.

Taking a deep breath, she made to speak, but her voice cracked and she wheezed pathetically. She hyperventilated for a few seconds. "How…long?"

"Four hours," he said quietly.

"Four…hours? You let…me stay…like that…for four hours?"

"I gave you the antidote thirty minutes after exposure. The results were far from satisfactory."

"What…does that mean?"

"It was…" Crane cleared his throat a little. "…ineffective."

"Ineffective."

"And…" He seemed reluctant to continue. "Your heart stopped."

Harley gulped.

They lay there in silence for several more minutes.

Finally, she whispered, "What now?"

"Now…" He paused and struggled to find words. "I do not know."

Harley thought about this. She thought about a great many things in the space between these words and the next he spoke.

"You need rest to recover," he continued, "However, I cannot send you back to your dormitory in your current condition, nor can you stay here."

"Why not? I could sleep on—"

"Too many questions would be asked if you were seen leaving my office on a Saturday morning—the sort of questions that could cost you your scholarship and me my position at the university. We were very lucky the last time you stayed the night here; I cannot and will not risk that we might not be so lucky again. Not with you like this."

"Take me home," Harley said softly.

She felt his entire body stiffen behind her, the arm holding her captive going wooden. "What?"

"Take me home. Your home."

"That would be…unwise."

"Why?"

He did not answer at first, seemingly lost in thought.

"Please, Professor," she pressed.

"No," he said, raising his voice above a whisper for the first time since she regained consciousness. "I have a better idea."

Crane shifted behind her, peeling his arm away from her body and stumbled to his feet. She felt the loss of his warmth acutely, but did her best to ignore it. She too sat up, her hands braced on the carpet. Harley's arms felt almost too weak to support her body weight, but she fought her way to a seated position, bracing her back against his desk.

With his hands on the small of his back, Crane leaned backwards until his spine made an audible "Crack!" noise and then he leaned over to loosen the muscles supporting it.

"Professor?"

He massaged the place where his neck and shoulder met. "It may surprise you to learn this, Miss Quinzel, but men my age do not do well lying on hard floors for long periods of time, generally."

"You say that like you're old," she whispered weakly, watching the room wave in front of her eyes.

"I am a good many years older than you are, and was never half as spry as I…assume you to be."

Despite her dizziness, Harley's cheeks heated, a sudden blush staining them. "I don't…"

"You are here on a gymnastics scholarship, are you not?"

She closed her eyes to stop the room from spinning and nodded, then decided that closed eyes and a moving head were a bad combination. When her eyes popped open again, she found Crane standing over her, offering his hand.

"Come, Miss Quinzel."

Gingerly, Harley slipped her hand into his and tried to stand. She wobbled and fell against the desk, clutching the edge for support.

"I'm not sure I'm going to make it outta here, teach," she said, her voice thin, almost lilting. "Not unless you got a wheelbarrow stashed someplace."

"No wheelbarrow. I'm afraid—" Crane swept her arm up over his shoulder, taking the bulk of her weight on his thin frame, "—I will have to do."

He helped her find her shoes and righted them with his foot so that she could step into them. Never before had she wished so badly to own nothing but ballet flats—pumps were not exactly the best thing to wear when one's balance was questionable at best. Once she was sure she wasn't going to turn her ankle over, Crane helped her on with his own overcoat.

The corridor outside his office was dark and quiet as the grave. The campus beyond was just as still. There weren't even any campus police about.

Harley stumped along beside Crane, doing her level best to remain upright. With him as a crutch, she was doing an okay job of it, but she felt very, very tired. So tired, in fact, that she was having a hard time keeping her eyes open. "Where are we going?"

"My car." He seemed to be scanning the horizon for something, though she didn't know what. Something about his demeanor reminded her of an alert animal, twitchy and suspicious.

"And after that?"

He didn't respond to the question. Instead, he pointed towards the parking lot they were rapidly approaching, specifically to a long, square-ish car that was either dark brown or beige. "There."

When they reached the vehicle, Crane left her leaning against it. He fumbled with his keys and opened the passenger side door for her. Harley carefully lowered herself into the seat, thankful for the chance to rest at last. Once she lifted her legs into the car, he pulled the seat belt over her chest and clicked it into place.

"I coulda done that," she mumbled.

"I believe you." He slammed the door.

Harley leaned back in her seat, letting her head fall back against the headrest. She tried to pay attention to Crane crossing in front of the car to get to the driver's side door but she was just _so_ tired…

A few seconds before Crane's key was inserted into the ignition, Harley blacked out.


	10. Chapter 10

There was light shining on her face. It wasn't warm.

It took a great deal of effort for Harley to open her eyes even a little bit. When she finally managed to open them a crack, she was blinded by a bright white light suspended above her. Slamming her eyes shut once more, she clutched her head. The migraine was near instantaneous, reminiscent of the worst hangover she'd ever had. She felt like throwing up. She felt like curling up into a ball and crying. She felt like dying would honestly be preferable to opening her eyes again.

Hot breath moved over her cheek. "Miss Quinzel…"

Though his voice was scarcely above a whisper, it boomed, echoing inside her head. She groaned. How could she possibly feel like this when last she remembered, she was just _tired_?

Something smooth and cool pressed itself against her lips and she jerked her head back, gasping in surprise. "What—"

"You are dehydrated," he murmured. "Drink."

The cool glass came to her mouth again and she gulped water, some of it splashing on her chest. She managed to swallow twice but sputtered after that, coughing so hard she had to turn on her side to keep from choking.

Tears sprang to her eyes as she strangled on liquid and she took a few great heaving breaths to compensate. For a moment, she thought she would recover, but the taste of bile suddenly made itself known on her tongue.

Without warning, her stomach gave a mighty roll inside her. She threw up.

Afterward, she collapsed in a heap, trembling. She felt Crane's hand on her back, between her shoulder blades. It was startlingly warm, which made her realize that she'd broken out in a cold sweat.

"I'm…sorry."

"I have a mop and bucket." The disgust in his voice wasn't easily disguised. The hand on her back moved to her shoulder, urging her to move. "Lie back. Rest."

Harley rolled onto her back and took a few more shuddering breaths. Though she wanted to, she didn't dare open her eyes. If another spike of light drove its way into her retinas, she had no doubt she would keep throwing up until she had nothing left to part with but vital organs.

She heard Crane's footsteps, followed by the sound of metal casters moving across the floor near her. There was a _splush_ sound and then the soggy flop of something wet slapping against the floor. The very sound made her feel nauseous all over again.

The clean-up didn't take very long. Soon enough, the metal caster sound was moving away from Harley and Crane was approaching, the soles of his shoes making a slight squeaking sound against the wet floor.

A moment later, a damp cloth came into contact with her forehead, covering her eyes. She instantly felt some small measure of relief, though she still felt very weak.

Harley blacked out again.


	11. Chapter 11

When next she awoke, Harley's headache was gone and she was alone. Though she had no way of knowing it, thirty-six hours had passed since she'd first gone to Crane's office. She had slept through the worst of the after effects and had only the mildest recollection of the nightmare images that had plagued her dreams.

Gingerly, she opened her eyes, bracing herself for the inevitable screaming pain of being hit by light, but no pain came. She breathed a sigh of relief and stared up at the bare bulb swinging from the ceiling, its pull chain creaking with each sway.

After a minute, Harley sat up carefully. The room didn't spin, miraculously, and her nausea seemed to have abated. Her mouth felt dry and the taste of vomit lingered. When she was sure she could stand up, she did so, and examined her surroundings.

The room she occupied appeared to be part of a warehouse, or maybe a storage unit of some kind. The walls were bare corrugated metal, like chrome, that winked and shone brightly as the swaying light hit its surface. There was a cot, which she'd been lying on and a bedside table next to it, upon which was a small bottle of mouthwash. Across the small room, there was a steel table covered with yellow legal pads with notes scribbled all over them and a mop and bucket. Harley picked up the mouthwash and rinsed with it gratefully, spitting into the bucket.

Besides the furniture, there wasn't much of anything else. There were, however, two doors in opposite corners of the room. Harley crossed to open the one nearest and found it led outside, where night had fallen. The area seemed rundown, from what little she could see in the dark, and looked like part of Gotham's industrial district. That wasn't any help. She went to the other door and opened it.

On the other side, Harley found a much larger room, full of all manner of curious objects. There was another steel table along the nearest wall to her left, this one populated with chemistry equipment of all sorts, some of which she recognized. A few feet away from it, more toward that center of the room, there stood a gurney, which had been bolted to the cement floor. Leather straps dangled from either side of the gurney bed, two each for hands and feet.

The wall on the right side of her was full of metal bookshelves—the kind that could quickly and easily be assembled or disassembled according to necessity—and all of them were full. Chemistry books, notebooks, binders labeled with mysterious designations and a number of psychology and criminology books were tucked safely into the shelves, neatly organized. Harley approached the bookshelf and looked at the titles. There was nothing that she would have considered unusual for Crane's library—he did teach a purely optional introductory course on criminal psychology once a semester—but the fact they were in a room with a device used for confinement gave her pause.

Directly opposite the door Harley had just stepped out of there stood a large vat with a "CAUTION: CORROSIVE!" sticker on it and beside that, a steel roll-up door took up half the wall. A chain with a padlock hung from one side of it, unlocked and forgotten.

"Professor Crane?" Harley called.

There was no answer.

Against every instinct for self preservation she had, Harley crossed to the steel door, pulled the chain away and bent down to grab the handle. She didn't know if she was strong enough to roll it up by herself, but presumably Crane could do it, and he wasn't that much bigger than her. He was certainly in worse shape than she was…

Clutching the handle, Harley pulled as hard as she could. The door rolled up easily for the first foot or so but then got stuck. She tugged a few times and it finally gave way, sliding up into the ceiling the rest of the way.

The room within was dark, but she could just make out a string hanging from above that was attached to another light bulb. She pulled it and, blinking in the sudden brightness, tried to process what she saw.

The room was divided by chain link fence into six smaller sections, each one about three by three feet. They looked almost like…cages.

"Miss Quinzel…"

Harley screamed like a ninny and spun on her heel. Professor Crane stood behind her with a bag of Chinese take-out in hand.

"Professor Crane!" Relieved that he hadn't abandoned her, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. "I thought—oh, you're okay!"

Crane dropped his bag and put his hands over hers, pulling them free of his neck. "That is quite enough, Miss Quinzel."

Harley stepped away from him reluctantly and pouted.

"Would you care to tell me why you were nosing around in here?"

"I was—" Harley derailed her own train of thought and decided to poke him in the chest. "Would you care to tell _me_ why you brought me to a kennel? And what's with the autopsy table, huh? And the vat? Is it quicklime? Are you a serial killer?"

Crane snatched her hand, crushing the poking finger in a punishing grip. Harley immediately regretted having even considered poking him in the chest.

"The autopsy table is not mine, it was already here—I assume you noticed it is _embedded in the concrete floor_. I merely rent this place as a storage facility," he said, his voice low and threatening. "At one time, this building was used by one of the Gotham mob families to store and dispose of…inconvenient evidence. It serves that purpose no longer, I assure you, but it was the only place that is the correct size for my storage needs that I could afford with my meager salary."

"What about the cages?"

"I trust you have heard of _dog fighting?_ "

"And the vat?"

"Empty."

It surprised her how quickly she was prepared to accept his explanation, whether it was true or not. Something bothered her, though. "If you had this place, why have we been working in your office the past two months?"

"I have only been renting it for a very short time," he replied. "And I assumed—and I do not think incorrectly—that after weeks of meeting in my office on campus, where you felt relatively safe, you would not be comfortable randomly coming _here_ to a site that was formerly used for the disposal of corpses and still houses paraphernalia for same."

Harley accepted this aspect of his explanation as well. She probably _wouldn't_ have come here willingly, or if she had, she would have freaked out and gone running off into the night to the nearest police station, ready to get him tossed in the clink with wild accusations of being a madman who wanted to skin her and wear her.

"I believe you," she said with a reassuring nod. She reached out and squeezed one of his hands between hers. "It's…kinda…nice. For a dungeon, I mean. A few throw pillows, maybe an area rug…"

"Miss Quinzel," he shook her off, "I do not care whether you believe me or not, nor did I bring you here to gain your approval or _decorating advice_. I brought you here to recover. Since you are walking around causing me endless grief, I presume you have managed to do that, in which case you are free to leave. You _are_ feeling better, I trust?"

"I feel…" Harley looked at him hopefully, "…terrible."

He looked at her sternly, clearly not buying the lie. "Are you trying to prolong this?"

"Um. No?" "Miss Quinzel," Crane said stiffly, "You have been a better than adequate assistant and a decent guinea pig, but our business is concluded. You have no more scientific data to offer me. Frankly, you should be glad to be rid of me so that you may return to your life."

"Is…" Harley's brow furrowed. "Is that all this was? Business? Science?"

"What _else_ would it be? Surely you didn't think I derived some sort of pleasure from putting you through hell with hallucinogenic drugs?"

"Well…no, but I thought—"

"Miss Quinzel—"

"Wouldja stop callin' me that?!" she exploded abruptly. The outburst surprised even her but she ran with it. "My name's Harley! H-A-R-L-E-Y!"

"It would be wildly inappropriate for me to address you by your first name."

"You've called me Harley before!"

"Once, as a means of comforting you under extraordinarily stressful circumstances. It was a mistake that I do not intend to repeat if—"

"Oh for—" Harley grabbed him by the lapels and smashed her lips to his. She kissed him with everything she had and then kissed him a little longer, just for good measure. She kissed him until she didn't have any breath left and had to pull back, gasping for air.

Her hands still tight around the fabric of his jacket, his face became stony. His expression was thunderous. It actually _scared_ her. With jerky, twitching fingers, he pulled at her hands, crushing them in a grip so tight that his knuckles blanched. He forced her to relinquish her hold on him. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

"Miss. Quinzel." His voice was positively furious. "You will refrain from assaulting me in such a manner."

Harley couldn't tell if she was angry or hurt or what. "But I wan—"

"No. You do _not_ ," he ground out from between clenched teeth. "You are experiencing misattribution of arousal. You have been through several bouts of intense fear in my presence and your body has fooled you into thinking that the rush of hormones is directly connected to _me_. It is _not_. You do not love me, you do not want me, you probably do not even genuinely _like_ me, for which I do not blame you as I am quite a disagreeable and unlikable man."

Harley stomped her foot, twisting her hands and trying to free them from his. "I wanted you _before_ the experiments."

"That I very much doubt."

"Were ya blind?!" She screeched, her emotions becoming quite unstable and impossible to control. "Sexy librarian!"

He didn't seem to understand and no wonder. She wasn't being terribly coherent.

"I spent _weeks_ tryin' to get yer attention, ya dope! Whadja think I was doin', playin' dress-up for my health?!"

She could see it as comprehension dawned on him. "Those ridiculous costumes were meant for _me_?"

"Duh! Who'd ya think they were for?!"

"I assumed they were for one of the young men in class. One of the young men in any of your _other_ classes. The University's sexy professor. I have no idea who that might be, but there _always_ is one."

"Well, I got news fer ya, chum, this time the sexy professor is YOU."

"I am no such thing. You will cease this tantrum immediately and set aside any and all ridiculous romantic notions you have about me this instant."

"Or else what?"

"Or else I will disabuse you of such notions _myself_ and in the most brutal manner possible."

"Ha!"

Crane drew himself up to his full height and _loomed_ over her. "Miss Quinzel…"

Harley was breathing hard, glaring up at him, stubbornness and petulance written all over her face, with tears threatening to spill over.

"You are a _child_ ," he said cruelly. "A man such as myself has no _need_ for someone like _you_."

"The experi—"

" _You are not the first._ "

The words bounced around inside her head, over and over again. "But—"

"You are not the first assistant, or the first lab rat, or the first woman I have pulled from the abyss and held still while she sobbed out her terror," he hissed. "You _are not special._ "

Tears splashed on the ground. The hurt just made her angrier.

"You are a silly, frivolous little girl who is so insecure in herself that any denial of attention is grounds for obsession," he continued ruthlessly. "Your interest in psychology is superficial, you are not serious about your studies and you do not thirst for knowledge. Even if you _were_ the first to assist me, even if you were special in _that_ way, _I still would not want you_. You have misinterpreted my actions after each trial as being evidence of softness, of affection for you. _They are not._ "

Harley shook her head, trying to shake the words away. "I'm not any of those things! I'm not like that! You don't know anything!"

"I am a psychologist, Miss Quinzel," he said, putting a hand on either side of her face to keep it immobile, "I know _everything_. You give your whole _self_ away in your wayward glances and the words you use and the men you date. I see you more clearly than I wager _anyone_ else does."

"Stop—"

"You think me a game to play—a toy that will respond the way you want it to if only you could find the right button. That is all the feeling you have for me. If I ever stopped denying you, you would only grow bored, because what you feel _is not affection_ , it is nothing more than a thirst for attention."

"Stop it!"

But he didn't stop. If anything, he grew even more vicious. "Any measure of emotion you have developed is a combination of desperation and vulnerability. You are _infatuated_. Freud called it _transference_ , Miss Quinzel, and your little feelings are nothing more than _textbook symptoms_ , which you might recognize if you paid attention in class instead of daydreaming about bedding your teacher—"

"STOP IT!"

She slapped him. Surprised, he staggered back, releasing her.

Harley ran.


	12. Chapter 12

Weeks went by. Harleen Quinzel began to change. She stopped partying, started dressing in drab, dowdy clothes and became humorless and gray. She turned herself into the most studious pupil any teacher could ask for.

Though she still attended his classes, Harley did not linger in Professor Crane's classroom anymore. She didn't try to get his attention. She didn't even look at him when he spoke, though she recorded his every word in her notebook.

On a late afternoon in the spring, four months after the last time they spoke to each other privately, Harley made the familiar trek across campus to the psychology building. She entered just in time to see another young woman leaving his office. It didn't even hurt.

When the girl was gone, Harley approached. "Professor Crane."

"Miss—" Harley winced as he said it. "—Quinzel."

Wasting no time, she pulled a paper from her messenger bag and thrust it at him. "I would like you to sign this. It's a letter of recommendation for an internship. I saved you the trouble of drafting one by doing it myself."

He took it from her and looked it over. "Arkham Asylum. Well, I was certainly not expecting this from _you…_ "

There was a small victory in surprising him, but she didn't gloat. "I am serious about my work."

"I see that you are, now." He pulled a pen from his pocket and scrawled his name at the bottom of the paper. Then, he handed it back to her. "I wish you the best of luck in this endeavor."

"I don't need it."

"No, I don't suppose you do." For the first time in all the time she'd known him, one corner of his mouth turned up. It was not a smile, but it was close enough.

"Good afternoon, Professor."

* * *

When she was gone, Jonathan Crane retired to his office. He took down a binder, flipped it open and scanned one of the pages.

Once he found what he wanted, he took out his pen and added a notation at the bottom:

_Harleen Quinzel, 4/11: Experiment results still inconclusive, but v. promising. Change in work ethic, shows signs of great ambition. May reach full potential after all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Final Author's Notes: **Transference** was one of those stories that just demanded to be written and now that the characters are under my skin, it's trying to demand a sequel or two. I'm not sure I have time to produce such a thing, but I'm definitely going to try when I get the opportunity. This Harley and this Crane must meet again._
> 
> _For now, this story stands alone, fitting into regular comics continuity as neatly as I could manage. Thanks to each and every one of my reviewers and readers, you're all spiffy!_


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